Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/368

 to stick by the right, its longing for the wrong—for the titbittidbit [sic], which it knows it would be improper to steal—and the final triumph either of virtue or temptation. The poor animal, knowing or feeling the weakness of the flesh, sometimes has the moral strength, the force of character, the good sense, to avoid temptation altogether. But dogs, like men, are apt to have the most trying temptations thrust unexpectedly upon them, and then comes the tug of war of the appetites and passions—the moral turmoil. that may make shipwreck of or that may strengthen virtue. Sometimes, then, by the dog, as by the man, temptation is successfully resisted after perhaps a series of protracted and painful moral struggles that have been very apparent to the onlooker. Unfortunately, however, equally in dog and man, the resistance of temptation is less common by far than non-resistance or non-success in resistance, the result of which is various forms or degrees of wrong-doing.

But in the dog, cat, and other animals this wrong-doing is accompanied by a perfect consciousness or conception of the nature of their behavior. They are quite aware of being engaged in actions that will bring inevitable punishment, which penalty, moreover, they are sensible they deserve. Miss Buist gives the history of a pet canary that was given to prancing about on her piano-keys, and that knew it was wrong in so doing.

Abundant evidence of a consciousness of wrong-doing is to be found either generally in the—

 1. Pricks, stings, or pangs of conscience. 2. The various expressions of a sense of guilt—for instance, the— a. Sneaking gait. b. Depressed head, ears, and tail. c. Temporary disappearance. d. Permanent absconding; desertion of home and master. 3. The multiform exhibitions of contrition, regret, repentance, self-reproach, remorse— Or more specifically in the— 4. Efforts at reconciliation and pardon, including the giving of peace-offerings. 5. Various forms of making atonement. 6. Concealment of crime or its proofs. 7. Artifices for escaping detection or conviction. 8. Non-resentment of punishment. 9. Sensitiveness to reproof, or even under mere reference to former delinquency. 10. Punishment of offenders by and among each other.

Conscience is frequently as severe a monitor in other animals as in man, its reproaches as stinging and hard to be borne, its torments sometimes intolerable. We may speak quite correctly, for instance, of the conscience-stricken animal thief, the cat or dog caught in the